


With your basket and my basket

by labellementeuse



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Restaurant, F/M, Perc'ahlia Vacation, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 22:38:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7776427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labellementeuse/pseuds/labellementeuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People are screwing in her walk-in, the maitre d' is stealing her food, and her brother's just an asshole, but at least Vex has a great bartender.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With your basket and my basket

**Author's Note:**

  * For [impossibletruths](https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/gifts).



> Written for teammompike/impossibletruths in the Perc'ahlia Vacation prompt fest, to the prompt "the kitchen of a 5-star restaurant". Thanks for the great prompts :) Thanks also to [aworldinside](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aworldinside) and [shihadchick](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shihadchick) for beta reading on a Monday night. Disclaimer: I know nothing about restaurant kitchens of any kind and have not so much as eaten in a 5-star kitchen or watched an episode of Kitchen Confidential so this is all fudged, sometimes deliberately and sometimes accidentally. I hope more knowledgeable people will forgive me. Title is from [a proverb](https://www.google.co.nz/search?sclient=psy-ab&client=firefox-b&btnG=Search&q=naku+te+rourou%2C+nau+te+rourou%2C+ka+ora+ai+te+iwi). 
> 
> There is one minor warning in the end notes, but also some spoilery content.

Keyleth, Vax and Gilmore are fucking in the walk-in again. 

"Great," Vex says, shoving past them to grab the things she needs. "I always love seeing my brother having sex. Really sets me up for a dinner service."

Vax says something muffled; Vex almost looks over to see why, then jerks her face back around. The tone was sarcastic; she can probably guess what he said. And why she couldn't hear it properly.

"Sorry," Keyleth pants, sounding more sincere and also kind of embarrassed. She has a sense of shame, which is unusual around here. Gilmore just laughs, case in point. 

"Just try to keep it hygienic, will you?" Vex says as she pushes back out into the kitchen. "There's food in here." She catches sight of Gilmore waving a languid hand as she pushes the door shut with a sigh. 

"Told you not to go in there," the maitre d' says, swanning by with an apple in one hand. 

"Get out of my kitchen, Scanlan, or we'll all be getting toast for family dinner."

"I'm gone," he says, and is out the swinging doors, whistling. 

"That's not going to keep the staff happy," Percy says, coming in as the doors swing back. 

"Carbs give you energy," Vex says, callous. "Plus I saw my brother screwing in the freezer and if I'm not happy, no one's happy."

Percy takes on an expression of deep sympathy. "I'm so very sorry," he says. "Really, my heart goes out to you."

"I know you're being sarcastic, but I'm going to choose to take you seriously and say thank you," Vex says. "But seriously, if people who aren't cooking don't get out of my kitchen we're all going to be very hungry tonight." 

Percy raises his hands. He's carrying a green bottle with a paper label, scribbled on in Percy's distinctive handwriting - BRANDY SEPTEMBER. 

"Is that--"

"It is," he says, looking smug. "Should be pretty good by now. Want a taste?"

Vex bites her lip. "You know I do, bastard," she says, without rancour.

"Believe it or not, you're not the first person to call me that." Percy reaches past Vex to the assortment of cheap glasses on the staff shelf. It's behind her, but she doesn't move, choosing, as is her sacred right as a Vessar twin, to be obnoxious, so Percy has to come right up against her, reaching past her head. He's such a tall bastard he can reach the glasses without so much as getting up on his toes; it's pretty unfair. Vex tips her head up to look at him, raising an eyebrow.

Percy looks down his nose at her, but doesn't comment. He comes back with two glasses and puts them on the bench beside Vex. He steps back just a little, enough that they're not touching but she can still feel the warmth radiating from him, and pours a finger into each, then picks both glasses up and offers her one. 

Vex takes it, clinks it against his, and sips. Her eyes close briefly. It's smooth but fruity, rich, strong--"I can taste the pears," she says. "This is amazing."

Percy swallows his own sip. "I tinkered with the still a little," he says. "It's all right."

Vex pokes him with the hand not holding the glass. "It's amazing," she says again. "Don't sell yourself short. What are you going to do with it?"

Percy shrugs. "This one's for you, and a couple more if you want them," he says. "I haven't done much testing for mixed drinks yet, so I don't know what I'll do with them at the bar."

"Of course I want them," Vex says. "Oh my god! We could have crêpes stuffed with pears and drizzled with this and cream. People would go wild. How much for them?"

"Oh, nothing," says Percy. "I made them here, I used kitchen stuff, this is just gratitude tax."

"You used our burners instead of your shitty electric hob and a bunch of overripe pears we were going to throw out or feed to the waitstaff," Vex says. "I'm not sure that's a fair trade."

Percy looks pained. "They're a gift," he says. "Don't make me be all emotional at you."

Vex narrows her eyes at him. He does look truly uncomfortable, as Percy always looks when he has to discuss emotions, and she doesn't particularly want to push him, but … "You don't have to keep paying us back for being your friend. We love you, you know. That's how you pay us back."

"You're always going to be the people who took a chance on me when I had no one and nothing but an embarrassing and career-hindering criminal record," he says, baldly. "A couple bottles of home-made pear brandy don't really balance out what I owe you."

"We love you, too, Percival," Vax says from over his shoulder, and Vex and Percy both jump.

"How long have you been there?" Vax says, watching Percy straighten up and pull away from her. "You're so fucking creepy sometimes, brother."

"High-level unobtrusiveness training," Vax says. "We get it at waiter school. I can clear a course and fill five water glasses and nobody even notices I've been there."

"Delightful," says Percy. He's now five feet away from Vex and increasing the distance rapidly. "Don't try it on Grog when he's chopping ribs."

"I'm not an idiot." Vax's tone is relaxed, but he's eyeing Vex narrowly. 

"Mm, if you say so," Percy says. "Anyway, Vex, see you at family dinner," and he's out the door and gone, presumably off to fiddle with whatever's the latest ridiculous concoction he's putting together for the cocktail menu. 

Vex sighs. "You really are an asshole sometimes. I don't get in the way of your relationships," she says, glancing pointedly to the corner where Gilmore and Keyleth are presently standing awkwardly. At least, Keyleth looks awkward; Gilmore looks amused and interested, in a situation where surely just about anyone else would be uncomfortable. 

Vax shrugs. "You'll get him into bed eventually," he says. "He wants you, any idiot can see it."

"It's not like that." Honestly, Vex loves her brother, but sometimes he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. 

"Oh, yeah, it's a love connection with your jailbird boytoy." Vax curls his lip. "Right."

Vex feels her mouth drop open a little, and shuts it with a snap. She lets the silence grow until even Vax starts to look a little uncomfortable (although still not as uncomfortable as Keyleth; Gilmore, damn him, is still just amused). "You really are a fucking asshole sometimes, you know that?"

Vax shrugs, apparently unmoved. "So what else is new?"

Vex grits her teeth, picks up her knife, and points it at the door. "If everybody doesn't get out of my kitchen right now--"

Keyleth raises a hand. "I have prep," she starts.

"Fine, you can stay."

"I'll go if you tell me how the new mixer is," Gilmore says. 

"Glorious as advertised, which you know perfectly well." He raises an eyebrow at her tone, making her blush, and she sighs. "I love it," she admits. "You always have the best everything."

"It's a talent," he says. "Right. Bye, lovelies," and he leaves, pinching Vax's ass on the way out. 

Vax continues to look smug as he follows Gilmore out the door. Vex gives his back the finger, which he returns without even looking at her. "Family dinner at 4.30!" she yells after him. "Carnitas tacos, which none of you deserve!"

*

Vex and Vax are religious about the family meal. They take it as seriously as they take anything, which is to say very, but pretending they don't. Three years of family meals has worn down the pretence a little, though. Vax in particular has stopped trying to pretend he isn't a soppy bastard who loves every one of their staff and thinks of them as family. Vex still works the mock distaste when it suits her, but today, dropping a big tray of carnitas on the table next to a stack of soft tacos and fixings, she can't quite hide her fondness. "Eat up, kids," she says. 

Dinner is noisy as usual. Vax and Scanlan are arguing about something, Keyleth is expounding on the beauty of heirloom tomatoes to Pike, who looks only slightly, politely bored, and Grog's trying to pick up one of the newer waitstaff and failing spectacularly. Vex is pretty sure she's a lesbian, but watching Grog strike out is a little too funny to intervene, and Kima looks more amused than harassed. 

Vex admires her table with a fondly possessive eye--she really has the best staff in the city, if not on the planet, she thinks, perhaps overly generously--until she notices Percy's not at the table. Glancing around, she finds him behind the bar. He has a taco in one hand and is prodding at a machine that looks liable to explode at any minute. (It probably won't, though. Percy's machines usually don't, except for that one time.) Vex frowns, licks taco juice off her hand and saunters over. 

"Percival," she says, arch. "We have rules about family dinner."

"I know," he says, flicking a glance up at her and then back down. The thing he's fiddling with looks sort of like a blowtorch. "I thought it might be wisest to stay out of your brother's way for a while."

"Maybe, but you risk pissing me off," Vex says. "Worth it?"

He looks at her properly. "Not at all," he says, in that disarmingly sincere way he can sometimes come out with. "I'll be right there," and he puts the maybe-blowtorch down. 

"Good of you," Vex says, and leans against the bar watching him until he comes to the table.

*

Dinner service is OK that night, but busy; Vex barely leaves the kitchen except for one time when some rich asshole wants to throw his weight around by showing off to the owner, and Vax comes in to get her with a seriously disgusted eyeroll. 

"You're better with the rich fuckers than I am," he says.

"How are you a waiter again?" Vex says, but in the event she gets rid of the asshole with a wink and a discreet shared eyeroll with asshole's bored-looking date, and then it's back to the kitchen, frying, poaching, plating. 

Vox's menu changes weekly, depending on what Vex gets her hands on in her Monday trips out of the city; this week she got venison, okra, and mushrooms she bought from a roadside stand instead of foraging, because she's not an idiot. 

"I think I'll go diving next week," she says when Keyleth brushes past her to put two vegetable sides down on the window and slam the bell. 

"Good idea," Keyleth says. "We haven't had shellfish for a while."

"Abalone," says Vex, reflectively. "Abalone fritters?"

"Boring," Grog says; she hears his cleaver thump on his chopping board. 

"We can't do red meat for every meal," Keyleth says, and Vex tunes them out as they start bickering. 

Some time later she looks up, cracking her back, to realise the kitchen is quiet. Keyleth is sleepily plating one last dessert, Grog leaning around her to sprinkle over dried rose petals like the world's tallest flower girl. Desmond, the skinny dishwasher, is yawning into the soap suds; there's no order in front of Vex. For the first time all night she glances up at the kitchen clock. It's eleven, a little early to close, even for a Wednesday, but when she sticks her head out into the restaurant it's nearly empty. Rain is bucketing down outside, and Vax is flipping the sign on the door to CLOSED. 

Percy is behind the bar at the espresso machine. Vex wanders over and props herself on the bar, saying nothing until he slides a tulip cup and its saucer onto the bar for Vax to take to the last remaining couple still in the restaurant. 

When Vax goes, Vex taps the bar, and Percy thumps a glass down next to her. "One minute," he says, and bends to grab the bottle of pear brandy from under the bar. 

Vex watches him make the drink, but if she was asked later she knows she wouldn't be able to say what was in it; she's too busy watching his hands move, dancing between bottles indecisively, measuring out shots into the shaker by feel, delicately picking up a slice of orange zest. The whole thing gets poured through a strainer into her glass, garnished with the zest, and Vex picks up the heavy-bottomed glass, examining it. The single giant ice cube is surrounded by a pale pink liquid; it's a very fetching shade. She raises the glass to Percy and takes a sip, meeting his eyes the whole time until her eyelids flutter closed in pleasure. 

"Percy!" she says. "It's fantastic." It's the perfect end-of-night drink, in Vex's opinion; strong, sweet only from the pear brandy, yet not sour. Percy knows her tastes very well. Vex bites her lip, staring down into the glass she's cradling in her hands, and then looks back up.

Percy is watching her intently. He's blushing slightly, but he meets her gaze.

"Percy," Vex starts. 

Vax comes up behind her and collapses into a bar stool. Vex could cheerfully murder him. 

"A drink, please god," he says, and Percy waves a hand at him and turns away. 

"Good night?" Vex asks, and Vax nods into the hand he has resting over his face. 

"Not bad. No more assholes, no dropped trays. Perfect really." 

"Did you send everyone home?" Vex, glancing around, sees the restaurant now empty other than the three of them.

"Scanlan's in back with the cash and Desmond's finishing the dishes," Vax says, "but other than that, yeah. I sent the rest of the waitstaff home half an hour ago."

"Soft touch." Vex pats him on the shoulder. 

He pats her back, then drags her towards him with one arm until she's forced to lean into him. "Listen, Stubby," he says, "about Percy."

Vex glances over at Percy's tall back. He doesn't appear to be listening; he's got his weird blowtorch machine out, which hisses noisily, and is doing something unpleasant to a cherry. "Yes?" she says.

"It's not like he's not my friend, too," Vax says. 

"I know, darling." Vex rests her head on Vax's shoulder. "I do know."

Percy chooses that moment to turn around and plop Vax's glass down in front of him; it's tall, multicoloured, and has cream on top. 

"That looks disgusting," Vex says, involuntarily, and Vax just smirks at her. 

"Thank you so much," says Percy. 

"I mean," says Vex. "It looks … colourful?"

Vax laughs. He disentangles himself and levers himself off the stool. "I'm going to finish the books," he says, picking up his glass. "You two should leave." He saunters off towards the kitchen. 

"Er, goodnight?" Percy says in his direction. Vax raises a hand, twiddling his fingers without turning around.

Then they're alone. 

"Well, that was--"

"--weird," says Vex. The books are usually her jealously guarded domain, but just this minute she doesn't feel like chasing after Vax. She can always fix them tomorrow.

"Mm." Percy's looking at Vex; she can feel his eyes on her, and it makes her flush. She glances up at him, feeling obscurely shy. It's just Percy, after all. He's just her friend, just the best bartender she's ever known, just part of the Vox family.

Put like that, Vex thinks, maybe some nerves are not unexpected. 

The silence stretches a little. It's charged. Vex is still flushing.

"Percy--"

"Vex--"

They speak at the same time. Vex laughs; Percy grimaces.

"Sorry, you go," he says.

"Right. Ah--" In for a penny, Vex thinks. She puts her drink on the bar, reaches up to grab Percy's shirt, and pulls him down into a kiss. 

He's tense when their lips meet, and at first she's afraid--that she's read him wrong, that he'll pull away, that she's basically just sexually harassed an employee who will now justifiably quit and go work for any of the 20 establishments dying to hire him away from Vex--but he relaxes all in a rush, his mouth opening to hers. The angle is awkward, Vex sitting up from the bar, Percy bent down towards her, but Percy curls a hand behind her head and tips her face up and it works, flooding her with adrenaline. She feels hot with it, licking her way into his mouth, and he matches her eagerly until they have to draw apart, panting.

Vex reluctantly unwinds her fingers from Percy's shirt, smoothing it out where she's wrinkled it, and Percy releases his hands from her hair, making her shiver. Vex is panting. "So," she says, "what was it that you wanted to say?"

Percy blinks at her, looking a little owlish behind his glasses. "It's not at all important," he says. His glance dips from her face to her mouth to lower; he's flushed too, showing pink at the tips of his ear. 

"Good," Vex says. "Do you want to get out of here?"

"Absolutely," Percy says, devout.

*

They go to Percy's place because he lives nearest, in a tiny studio a three-minute walk from the restaurant. They get wet running through the rain, but Vex doesn't give a shit, and as soon as they get inside the door she pushes Percy up against it and goes right up on her tiptoes to press her mouth to his again. He gives way to her, one arm coming up to cling to her waist, the other pressed against the door. She twines one hand into that one and pins him there. The feeling is exhilarating; she drinks deeply. 

They kiss hungrily. Vex uses her free hand to tug Percy's shirt free from his pants; Percy gets the hand on his waist under her shirt, running his big hand from her waist to her spine and making her shiver. Eventually, though, Percy breaks away. 

"I, ah," he says, panting, "I should probably shower."

Vex pouts at him. 

"Hey, it's been a long day."

"Me too," she says. "Compromise: shower together?"

"You drive a hard bargain, but strangely I think I'm OK with that," Percy says, and walks backward towards the bathroom, tugging Vex with him. She goes eagerly, and they only stop to make out once or twice before they make it to the bathroom. Percy turns the shower on, then goes to unbutton his shirt before Vex sees him stopping to stare at her.

Vex already has her shirt off. She twists her arms up behind her to unhook her bra, unselfconsciously enjoying Percy's gaze, and sighs with pleasure as her bra hits the floor. 

"That's a good feeling," she says.

"Uh-huh," Percy says, evidently distracted, and he closes the distance between them to kiss her again, sliding his hand up from her waist to cup one of her breasts, running a thumbnail over her nipple and making her shiver. 

Vex sighs into it, but gets her hands up and unbuttons his shirt herself, dragging it down until it's tangling his arms together behind him and they're pressed together, bare chest to bare chest. The skin to skin contact is incredible, enough so that the kiss slows until they're standing there in their jeans, half naked, clinging to each other. 

Percy shakes his arms out of his shirt to run one hand through Vex's hair. She turns into it, then breaks away decisively, wriggling out of her jeans and panties in one economical motion. 

"Come on," she says, and steps into the shower. 

The water is beautifully hot, and Vex turns her face up into it until Percy presses up behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist and kissing her neck. Vex tilts her head back on his shoulder until she can see his face; he looks oddly naked without his glasses, pale hair darkened by water and plastered to his head. He looks younger than normal; Vex remembers with a pang that he's only 23, and wants suddenly to caress him. 

Then he presses his hips up against hers from behind, and his apparent innocence takes on a different flavour. Vex rocks back into it, then turns in Percy's arms so she can kiss him again. 

The stall isn't large, and they have to press together even when they're washing, getting soap in each other's mouths when they get distracted and kiss each other then pulling back to splutter. They get clean though, roughly, and then they get distracted again, standing together under the pounding water, running their hands over each other's bodies. Vex gets a hand on Percy's ass and squeezes, and he makes a noise into her mouth and breaks away. 

"May I?" he says, hoarse. 

"By all means," Vex says, and figures out what he was asking permission for when he folds himself inelegantly to his knees. "Oh, my god," she says, not quite of her own volition, when he takes her by the hips and presses his mouth to her clit, and then she says it again as he runs a sly hand up the inside of her thigh and presses two fingers inside her directly, and keeps saying it at an increasing volume for the next five minutes until she's shaking and coming all over Percy's entirely too talented face. 

He's flushed and hot as she drags him up to kiss her, mouth a little slick, and Vex wraps a leg around him and says "Come on, c'mon." 

Percy stifles a groan into her neck; she shivers at the feel of his stubble scraping there. "I think I might drop you," he confesses into her neck.

"Good point. Bed?"

"It's the traditional location," says Percy, and she smacks him before turning the water off. 

"We all know how much you care about tradition," she says. 

She beats him to the bed, but not by much, and drags him down on top of her. He drags kisses down her neck to her breasts, bites gently at her nipples; it's all around fantastic, but Vex wants, so she grabs him by the shoulders and flips them so she's on top, straddling him. 

She takes a moment to admire the view. Percy has a tall, pale frame, skinny on restaurant hours, coffee, and obsessive work. His chest is dusted with hair, dark in contrast to the bleached-white mop on top of his head, now damp and sticking up all over the place.

Percy has his hands on Vex's hips. He looks comfortable beneath her, surprisingly relaxed for someone who's still waiting on his first orgasm of the night, and for the first time since they got in the door she pauses. "Is this--okay?" Percy's hard, has been hard since they got in, and she can feel proof of it beneath her, but--

Percy raises his eyebrows at her. "Am I okay with being pinned to my bed by a beautiful woman? You know, I think I am, but let me check." He drives his hips up, and Vex reflexively works back against him, leaning forwards to pin his wrists into the pillow beside his head. She comes nose to nose with Percy, looking straight into his eyes. They're clear, relaxed. He even looks, she thinks, tentatively, happy. 

"Right," she says, and pushes back up to her knees. "I hope you have a condom somewhere in here."

"Ah." His face freezes in place.

"Percival," Vex says. "You better not be about to say what I think you're about to say."

"No, no. It's fine," he says. "I'm pretty sure." He wriggles out from under her, Vex kneeling off him to let him go. First he fumbles in his bedside cabinet, then makes his way to the bathroom. It's not a bad view, Vex thinks, lying on her side in bed. Still…

Before she really contemplates murder for the second time that night, though, he comes back in, waving a foil packet triumphantly. "Not even expired," he says. "I wouldn't have believed it if you'd told me."

"Not been sowing a lot of oats?" Vex inquires, taking the packet off him and ripping it open.

"Not of late," he says, voice going strained as she rolls it on him. 

"Now then," Vex says, rolling back on top. "Where were we? Oh, yes," grabbing his dick, "right about here."

*

Later, they lie slumped together in the wet spot in the middle of the bed. Percy's head rests on Vex's breasts, which he mouths at idly from time to time. Vex strokes a hand through Percy's hair, drifting, shivering into wakefulness when he lightly employs his teeth. 

"Listen," Percy says after a while, pulling away. 

Vex picks her neck up to look at him. He meets her gaze steadily. 

"What I was going to say," he says, "was that I'm not sure I'm a good person to be doing … this with right now."

Vex swallows, tries to sound casual. "This?"

"We both know this isn't just sex." Percy sounds controlled, but he darts a glance at her that she has no trouble interpreting. 

Vex grabs his hand, twining their fingers together. "Darling, no," she says. 

He looks relieved for a second, squeezes her hand, and then clearly steels himself to continue. "I'm still not a whole person," he says, looking at her seriously. "I know Vax knows that; it's why he isn't thrilled about this. I'm not sure I can be the person you deserve." He's gripping her hand so tightly now.

Vex nods. She looks up at the ceiling and collects her thoughts. Looks back at him. "I'm not all here either, you know," she says, as directly as she can. "None of us are. We're all--Vax isn't sure what he's supposed to be doing now we're not just struggling for survival. Keyleth is consumed by guilt over mistakes in her past. Scanlan's a 40-year-old man who just met his teenaged daughter for the first time. It's not necessarily the right time for any of us. But … I think this could be good, don't you?" She looks at where their hands are joined together. 

There's a pause. Vex grips Percy's hand and tries not to think about it.

"I do." Percy's voice is controlled as ever, but it scrapes a little as he breaks the silence. "I really do."

She brings their combined hands to her mouth and presses a kiss to his fingers. "So I think we should give it a try. Who knows, maybe it'll end terribly, but," and she sits up to say this, "no matter how it ends, you're always going to be part of my family."

Percy puts his free hand over his face. His chest heaves once, and then he's pulling his hand down and meeting her gaze. "You too, you know," he says. 

"I know," Vex says. 

END

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: Vex is Percy's boss in this story. They get it on.  
> Other stuff: 1. I don't know what Trinket is in this universe but I think he might be a pet rock :( I feel like the restaurant business is not great for pets. Maybe he's a Maine Coon? 2. I have no idea why Percy went to prison in this universe; I don't think he tried to kill anyone.


End file.
